Country diary + Animal welfare | The Guardianhttp://www.theguardian.com/environment/series/country-diary+world/animal-welfare
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Country diary: Claxton, Norfolk: The guns finally fall silent after the violence of the pheasant shoothttp://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/dec/08/guns-fall-silent-pheasant-shoot
<strong>Claxton, Norfolk:</strong> It was the 1847 invention of the breech-loading shotgun that unleashed this form of arithmetical ritual<p>I should have known when I saw the behaviour of the pheasants, banging repeatedly against the fence, until that small-brained frenzy coincided with a gap, when they rocketed up and away. The perpetual fusillade of guns from across the other side of the Yare sounded like the Somme. One wonders if that audible violence, which is surely peculiar to the killing inflicted by industrial societies, also measures our alienation from the natural landscape? One thinks, by contrast, of the silence and stealth that must always have surrounded hunters from the Paleolithic until the middle ages.</p><p>Yet this pheasant business probably has more impact on the shape of the British landscape than all the efforts of all the environmental organisations in their entire history. I tried to imagine its key moment – that period at the end of the shoot when the guns walk down the rows of carcasses. Sometimes there are hundreds of birds. The innovation that unleashed this form of arithmetical ritual was the 1847 invention of the breech-loading shotgun. One is tempted to speculate that there is a psychological continuum that stretches from that moment to the high slaughter of modern video games and even perhaps unto <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/apr/12/columbine-massacre-ten-year-anniversary" title="">Columbine</a>: a view of killing as entertainment with numbers. Yet in real hunting should the hunter not savour death sparingly, ringfencing it with meaning and significance so that there is a genuine transaction between predator and prey.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/dec/08/guns-fall-silent-pheasant-shoot">Continue reading...</a>HuntingBirdsWildlifeAnimalsAnimal welfareWorld newsEnvironmentRural affairsUK newsSun, 08 Dec 2013 21:00:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/dec/08/guns-fall-silent-pheasant-shootBethany Clarke/Getty ImagesThe target … a pheasant. Photograph: Bethany Clarke/Getty ImagesBethany Clarke/Getty ImagesA pheasant in Lavenham In Suffolk on March 03, 2012 in Lavenham. Photograph: Bethany Clarke/Getty ImagesMark Cocker2013-12-08T21:00:00ZFrom the Country diary archive: Pit pony 'holiday' in miners' strikehttp://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/mar/11/country-diary-strike-pit-ponies-1912
Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 16 March 1912<p>What do the pit ponies really think about the <a href="http://archive.guardian.co.uk/Repository/ml.asp?Ref=R1VBLzE5MTIvMDMvMTYjQXIwMTAwMg==&amp;Mode=Gif&amp;Locale=english-skin-custom">strike</a>? Many of us do not believe that they think at all, nor that they know anything about the reason of their present changed conditions, but certainly they can feel and appreciate that there is change. Is it great joy to them to come up into the fields? Some of them no doubt do enjoy the rest, the light, and the fresh air, as well as the change from hay to growing grass, but it is conceivable that to others it is painful. Animals, like many of us superior creatures who like to think that we are not animals, may be slaves of habit. Lack of regular employment and exercise may bore them, light may be trying to eyes accustomed to gloom, and raw, cold, and chilly rain may be positively painful to hides which have got used to a dry, warm, and equable temperature. There is yet another source of possible sorrow - the absence of a friend. Much has been written about cruelty to pit ponies, and no doubt there are cases of brutality, just as there are to the horses in our streets, but the miner is too passionately fond of animals to be guilty of systematic cruelty. Many of the ponies will miss the voice, the caress, and the companionship of the man or lad who has worked with them.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/mar/11/country-diary-strike-pit-ponies-1912">Continue reading...</a>Rural affairsAnimal welfareSun, 11 Mar 2012 22:30:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/mar/11/country-diary-strike-pit-ponies-1912guardian.co.ukguardian.co.ukpitpony Photograph: guardian.co.ukThomas Coward2012-03-11T22:30:00ZCountry diary: Bedfordshirehttp://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/nov/07/country-diary-bedfordshire-deer-road-death
Bedfordshire<p></p><p>The other night, a deer stepped out in front of me as I drove past the tollhouse at Cople. The car headlights picked out the muntjac tiptoeing across the road, a ballerina on cloven points. The doe tripped out of the spotlight cast by my braking car and into the full beam glare of an oncoming vehicle. But this animal was a practised pedestrian. She ducked down behind a bollard on the traffic island and waited. The car shot past us both and my last view as I drew level and glanced to the side was of a bouncing rump heading for the brambles in the darkness.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/nov/07/country-diary-bedfordshire-deer-road-death">Continue reading...</a>EnvironmentRural affairsUK newsAnimal welfareAnimalsSat, 07 Nov 2009 00:06:36 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/nov/07/country-diary-bedfordshire-deer-road-deathDerek Niemann2009-11-07T00:06:36Z